This invention relates generally to table games, and more specifically, to using shape control of magnetic fields for table games.
Table games are an immensely popular form of gaming and can be a substantial source of revenue for gaming establishments. Known table games include poker, blackjack, craps, pai-gow, Carribean Stud, Spanish 21, and Let It Ride, for example. A table game may involve the use of, for example, one or more cards, dice, wheels, balls, tokens, and gaming chips. During a typical gaming event at a gaming table, a player places a wager on a game, whereupon winning, an award is issued to the player in the form of cash, credit, gaming chips, markers, prizes, or by other forms of payouts.
A primary concern in the administration of table games by a gaming establishment is the management and tracking of gaming chips used by players and gaming establishment personnel to denote monetary values, as well as to “cash in” players, make wagers, pay out winnings, and “cash out” players. Gaming chips typically come in varying denominations, such as, for example, $1, $5, $25, $100, $1000, and $10,000 values, although a wide variety of other denominations and currencies for gaming chips are possible. Various systems and methods of managing and tracking transactions in a gaming establishment are known that utilize radio frequency identification (RFID) tags as a way of identifying and tracking the movement of gaming chips within the gaming establishment, and specifically in the context of a gaming table. To implement such a system, an RFID tag is typically embedded within each gaming chip and RFID readers and RFID antennae are then used at a gaming table to track the gaming chips. In such systems, each gaming table typically has designated chip placement areas to enable an RFID antenna placed at each chip placement area to be used to facilitate chip reading and tracking.
However, in known RFID chip tracking systems it has been experienced that RFID antennae and readers positioned about a gaming table may detect and/or read RFID gaming chips located outside of a desired chip placement area. Specifically, depending on the size and/or shape of a magnetic field emitted from an RFID antenna, the RFID antenna and/or reader may inadvertently read chips from an adjacent placement area. This is particularly noticeable where there are a large number of RFID gaming chips spread across a gaming table and/or some of a player's gaming chips are located slightly outside of a particular chip placement area. For example, a player's gaming chips may be in front of the player, but still be outside of a designated wager chip placement area. Although such RFID gaming chips may not be subject to a current bet or wager, the RFID gaming chips may still be in a path of a magnetic field and therefore identified as being subject to a current bet or wager.